There Was No Time
Time was running out.
“You’ve come back looking like a rag,” Jinha said, summing up Soyeong’s condition in a single sentence.
“Your tendons are one step away from tearing, and your blood vessels are on the verge of bursting. Did you go and fight for your life or something?”
“I came back with the insight to cross the boundary between life and death.”
“Then congratulations.”
Unlike the words of praise in his voice, Jinha’s hands worked with quiet efficiency. Soyeong was lying facedown on the bed, her upper body bare, and her smooth back was bristling with long acupuncture needles coated in medicine and poison.
To keep her tendons and blood vessels from rupturing, Jinha had used not only medicinal powders but poison as well, forcing everything into place. The moment her condition stabilized even a little, he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“The immediate crisis is over. Your blood vessels won’t burst right this second.”
“Thanks.”
“My lady, you keep coming back with your body in pieces. At this rate, I’m going to end up a divine physician.”
“You will be a divine physician. I guarantee it.”
“I’m deeply moved by your faith in your subordinate.”
Soyeong and Jinha traded jokes, and then Jinha left the room after saying he’d return in an hour.
It had been a long time since she’d had a full stretch of time entirely to herself. Soyeong closed her eyes and sorted through her thoughts.
I overdid it.
She had been too excited by the long-awaited progress in her martial arts and the fact that she had finally found an answer to a realm no one had ever reached before. Thanks to that, her body still unfinished, she had forced her martial skill out ahead of it and mangled herself in the process.
I should hold off on using Hyeoncheon Jinwon Shingong for a while.
Hyeoncheon Jinwon Shingong was unquestionably Soyeong’s martial art, but it had also been the martial art of the former Sapaelryeon leader. A technique that the old leader had only truly understood at the end of his life, after arriving at the starting point only through the far side of enlightenment. No wonder a body like Soyeong’s—barely above the First-class realm—couldn’t withstand it.
I need to focus on tempering my body and my dantian first.
When a warrior accumulated a full jia gap’s worth of inner power in the dantian, only then could they open the middle dantian. The middle dantian was the heart. By storing qi in the heart, the source of life itself, and breathing in concert with it, inner energy would strengthen the body from within.
Qi and body becoming one.
In strength, arm power, leg power, striking power, grip strength—every measure of physical might—it became impossible to compare them to ordinary warriors. It was the true realm of the superhuman.
In the martial world, that was called the Peak Realm.
For now, I should aim for the Peak Realm.
Opening the middle dantian was easier than it sounded.
At least, it was easy by Soyeong’s standards.
Even the First-class realm was called a domain of talent. There were countless people who spent their whole lives training and never even sensed the existence of qi. But for the truly gifted, the Peak Realm was something they climbed into as naturally as breathing.
Its requirement was a full jia gap’s worth of inner power.
Soyeong stared at the Blue Cloud Pill sitting before her.
If I take this and circulate my energy, I’ll have ten more years of cultivation under my belt.
The mental method of Hyeoncheon Jinwon Shingong could squeeze a little more benefit out of even the lingering traces of that energy, but it wouldn’t be enough to matter much. The Blue Cloud Pill was, after all, more like an emergency medicine an elder of Qingcheng Sect would only take in a crisis.
In any case, if she added the Blue Cloud Pill, the inner power in her dantian would amount to roughly thirty years.
Could I force open the middle dantian using demonic energy?
She thought of the fifteen years’ worth of demonic energy sleeping obediently in a corner of her dantian, but then she wiped the idea from her mind.
No matter how well-behaved it seemed, demonic energy was still demonic energy. It could turn on her at any moment and tear into her body.
In martial arts, there was no such thing as “if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.” One wrong choice could cost you everything. That was the road of martial cultivation.
So the saying from Wudang—that the slowest road was the fastest road—wasn’t wrong after all.
If I get impatient, I’ll lose my way in the end.
Soyeong decided not to rush.
Besides, wasn’t there a promise that if she came by Qingcheng Sect, Qingcheng would offer her better elixirs? And if she showed up at Ami Sect and performed a demonstration, she could shake some high-grade spirit pills out of them too.
Then reaching a jia gap’s worth of power would be easy enough.
Soyeong nodded to herself, satisfied.
“My lady, this is bad!”
Garyeong burst into the room, throwing the door open.
Usually the girl still made some effort to be polite, so the fact that she’d rushed in like this made it clear something truly serious had happened.
“What is it?”
“You’ve gotten a title!”
“...A title?”
Soyeong answered with mild disinterest.
A title was just a nickname people slapped onto promising figures wandering the martial world. Most of them were given by the so-called righteous sects, and the way those self-important fools went around calling each other this and that lord, this and that sage, was ridiculous beyond words.
They’d give you a cool title if they liked you, and if they didn’t, they’d stick you with some filthy disgrace of a nickname instead.
That was why Soyeong didn’t pay titles much mind.
It certainly wasn’t because she’d once been the Sapaelryeon leader and had become used to receiving strange epithets.
“They’re calling you Poison Flower! It already seems famous in Sichuan.”
Garyeong’s eyes were shining.
Among the many titles people could receive, the most special one was unquestionably one containing flower.
And why was it special? First, because no one but a woman could receive it. Second, because you had to be beautiful.
Only women whose looks were said to rival even the most legendary beauties in the world—women worthy of terms like overturning kingdoms and shame the moon and humiliate the flowers—could earn such a title.
To have the world say she was the most beautiful woman under heaven...
What honor could be greater for a woman than that?
“...I see.”
But the person in question, Soyeong, didn’t seem particularly moved. If anything, she looked somewhat put out.
“Aren’t you happy?”
“...Not really. I’m just wondering if people won’t come expecting too much and end up disappointed.”
Soyeong wasn’t interested in her appearance, but she knew very well how much effort women put into maintaining theirs. It took work so demanding that she sometimes thought it would be easier to lock herself away in seclusion and cultivate. Yet she herself had never put in any of that effort. She simply slept well, ate well, and trained hard.
“My lady, you really are beautiful enough.”
Garyeong spoke sincerely.
It came out sounding a little like she was trying to comfort her, but Soyeong’s beauty was real. Even without any care or adornment, it shone. Her skin stayed pale even after spending all day under the sun, and her muscles never showed through no matter how much she swung a sword.
She was a little on the short side, but her proportions were excellent, her legs long, and above all else her hips and chest were generous.
Garyeong found herself envying that face several times a day, wishing she could be born with Soyeong’s looks instead.
“...Why do you look at me like that? It’s a little filthy.”
“Th-That’s impossible.”
Garyeong hastily looked away from Soyeong’s gaze.
Soyeong let out a sigh at the sight of her. What an easy subordinate she was to read.
“Anyway, is that all you ran in here to tell me? Anything else?”
“Ah... there is other news, but it’s not really something that concerns you much.”
“What is it? Tell me.”
In any case, she was going to be recuperating for a while. Naturally, even a rumor drifting through the streets became interesting.
“Well... it’s really nothing major, but they say the Sapaelryeon leader has changed. The former leader died, and his son inherited the position.”
“...What?”
Soyeong reacted instantly to Garyeong’s words.
So it wasn’t the death itself that mattered. It was that the death had only just been revealed now.
No matter how vast the world was, it wasn’t easy to hide the death of someone at the level of a Sapaelryeon leader, and certainly not for over a month.
But difficult didn’t mean impossible.
It was widely said that information in the world was managed by two major organizations. On the righteous side, the Beggars’ Sect. On the demonic side, the Hao Clan.
In other words, it was the beggars and the riffraff who handled the flow of rumors. And because the world was so vast, there were far too many beggars and riffraff to shut their eyes, ears, and mouths all at once.
But slowing a rumor down is possible.
Sapaelryeon stood at the pinnacle of all demonic factions.
That meant it could also control the Hao Clan. If the Hao Clan had deliberately chosen to hide the Sapaelryeon leader’s death, then even the Beggars’ Sect would have had a hard time uncovering it.
And if the Hao Clan had hidden the Sapaelryeon leader’s death, there was only one thing that meant.
Yeon So-ha has fully taken control of Sapaelryeon.
Sapaelryeon wasn’t a particularly united organization. Even the Martial Alliance, for all its reputation as a righteous coalition, probably wasn’t as tightly bound as Sapaelryeon.
Those people had only ever been pinned down beneath the overwhelming force of the Sapaelryeon leader’s martial prowess.
So Soyeong had assumed that once he died, the organization would collapse.
Yeon So-ha didn’t have the martial might to crush them into submission.
And yet the result before her eyes said that Yeon So-ha had seized the entire faction.
That meant only one thing.
Yeon So-ha has reached the realm of Hyeongeom.
That exalted realm she had once thought impossible to reach.
“Anything else about the Sapaelryeon leader?”
“Uh... other than that, I heard the Sapaelryeon leader sent a letter to the Martial Alliance.”
“...To the Martial Alliance?”
How many times would a Sapaelryeon leader ever have reason to send a letter to the Martial Alliance? Direct contact between the Martial Alliance and Sapaelryeon had been unheard of for more than ten years. Soyeong herself had once been the leader, so no one understood that fact better than she did.
“Do you know what it says?”
“Not yet. The details haven’t come out. That’s why people in the streets are scared there might be a great war between righteousness and evil.”
A great war between the righteous and demonic factions.
With the Demonic Cult having appeared and Yeon So-ha now becoming leader, was it really a coincidence that such a mood was rising only now?
If Yeon So-ha truly intended to start a war, then there was no time.
Soyeong shoved her needles aside and forcibly sat up in a cross-legged position. It was the kind of action that could easily lead to fire deviation, but this was no time to worry about that. Because she had been lying bare-chested, her large breasts were exposed without restraint.
“A-Ah, my lady! Cover yourself a little!”
Garyeong panicked and hurried to shield her body.
Soyeong ignored her and stuffed a Blue Cloud Pill into her mouth, chewing it down in one bite. As the needles and medicine worked to heal the torn tendons, she forced the pill’s energy straight into her dantian.
The reason she was moving so urgently was obvious.
If war broke out between the righteous and demonic factions, Yeon So-ha’s life would be in danger.
Not because she worried about her adopted son’s safety.
Well, perhaps that was exactly what it was.
I have to be the one to kill that bastard...!
It was the conviction that if he died, she would be the one to kill him with her own hands.
***
Hanan Province, Luoyang.
The headquarters of the Martial Alliance.
Alliance Leader Jin Cheong-hwi was staring down at a single letter, deep in thought.
It had been sent by Yeon So-ha, newly risen to the position of Sapaelryeon leader.
The contents were shocking enough that Jin Cheong-hwi decided to gather everyone in the Martial Alliance at once.
“Gak, are you outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Issue the summons to all the great heroes of the Martial Alliance.”
“Understood.”
He needed to meet with the major figures of the Martial Alliance and prepare for what was coming.
Jin Cheong-hwi read the letter again.
It was full of polite flourishes and formalities, but in the end the important part was simple.
Soon, Yeon So-ha, the leader of Sapaelryeon, will come to visit the Martial Alliance.
For the sake of an alliance.